Last week’s First World War commemorations in Belgium to mark the centenary of the Battle of Passchendaele made international news headlines.

Direct descendants of those who died were invited to apply for ballot places to the two-day ceremony and I was interested to hear from reader Jeff Cecil Harrison and his son, Max, who successfully applied and attended in remembrance of their relative, Cecil Harrison.

“Private 256109 Cecil Harrison, of the Leicestershire Yeomanry, was born in 1892 in Wymondham, Leicestershire,” explains Max, of Knaresborough, North Yorkshire.

“As a boy, he lived at 55, Curzon Street, Leicester. In 1912, aged 20, he married Margaret Damms and later that year, they had their only son, Leslie.

“Margaret was the daughter of the licensee of The Cricketer's Rest pub, on Frog Island. I'm a pub licensee now, so it must be in my genes!

“A century ago, Cecil was returning to the front with another soldier from the Leicestershire Yeomanry, Private A Warner, when he was killed by a German shell on October 24, 1917, at Hellfire Corner, near Passchendaele. He was 25.

“Sadly, Leslie grew up from the age of five without a father and my own father, Jeff, never got to meet his grandfather.”

Following their trip to Belgium, Jeff wrote to me, detailing the events – complete with a couple of surprises.

“The events were organised by the British and Belgian governments.

“The commemorations at Tyne Cot Cemetery and in Ieper/Ypres town, centre of the Battle of Passchendaele, were very moving and unforgettable, especially for the 4,000 people invited, because they were, like Max and I, direct descendants of the young men killed in the quagmire of the fields around there,” writes Jeff, of Swithland.

At the panels to the Missing: Max Harrison, Jane Worthington, Jeff Harrison, and Tim Worthington at Tyne Cot Cemetery, Belgium, with Leicestershire Yeomanry names on Panel 3 of the Memorial to The Missing Wall. Mrs Worthington is holding her great grandfather's photograph.

“There are 11,908 graves at Tyne Cot and 34,888 names engraved on the Memorial to the Missing, for men who have no known grave.

“There are two men from the Leicestershire Yeomanry whose names are commemorated in this way: my grandfather, Private C J Harrison and 41191 Private Arthur Warner, of Kibworth Beauchamp: Private Warner was 29 when he was killed on April 18, 1918.

“Thousands more names of the ‘missing’ are engraved on the Menin Gate, in Ypres, where the Last Post is sounded daily by buglers at 8pm – and has been since 1928.

“Here, are 79 more names of men from the Leicestershire Yeomanry – 78 of whom were killed on the same black day, May 13, 1917.

“On Sunday, July 30, 2017, we drove to Hellfire Corner, once called the hottest spot on Earth, but nowadays a busy roundabout where the Menin Road intersects with two other roads.

“Shrouded by shrubbery, we found the British Demarcation stone put there to record the furthest advance of German troops in 1918.

“Then, with maps kindly supplied by Major Luke Smith, of the Leicester Yeomanry Association, we found Oskar Farm, on a track, once a feature in the Yeomanry’s front line, where they withstood the German advance.

“Duckboard pathways marked on the map show that the low-lying fields on the British side must have become a quagmire of clinging mud.

“In contrast, the ground on the German side appeared to be slightly higher and rose towards woods beyond.

“Being there fired the imagination. Behind Oskar Farm, we found a deep crater that had become a pond, now evidently a useful irrigation water supply for the farmer.

Honoured: At the televised ceremony, the Duchess of Cambridge and the Queen of Belgium coincidentally laid flowers at the grave of two unknown German soldiers – alongside Cecil Harrison's poppy cross.

“On Sunday evening, we attended the amazing event in Ypres Market Square, that started with the 8pm Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate and developed into a sound, light, words and music show in the Square that was televised and projected onto the walls of the Cloth Hall.

“On the second day, Monday, July 31, at the Tyne Cot Commemoration, among the 4,000 guests we found other Leicester people searching for memorials of relatives.

“Jane Worthington and her husband, Tim, of Barrow-on-Soar, were looking for the memorial to Jane’s great-grandfather, James Leonard Dewberry, who was killed in action with the Machine Gun Corps.

“They found his name on Panel 56 for the Missing at the Menin Gate: by a chilling coincidence, he was killed on July 31, 1917, so the Tyne Cot commemoration was 100 years to the day of his death.

“We took a British Legion cross for my grandfather, Cecil.

“However, because there was no place to secure it by his engraved name on the wall, we put it in the earth by a grave dedicated to ‘two unknown German warriors’.

“Imagine our feelings when later at the televised ceremony, the Duchess of Cambridge and the Queen of Belgium laid flowers at the grave – alongside Cecil’s poppy cross.

Jeff adds: “I look at Cecil now with admiration.

“For me, he personifies and adds a human face to all those thousands of men who were killed.”